Espionage and Intelligence

As recently as last year, the Obama administration seemed willing to treat Jonathan J. Pollard, a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst sentenced to life for spying for Israel, as a bargaining chip in Middle East diplomacy. At the time we criticized any linkage between freedom for Pollard — a hero to many Israelis but a despised figure in the U.S. intelligence community — and peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Yet we also noted that Pollard would be eligible for parole in November 2015. The peace negotiations collapsed and Pollard did not receive clemency from President Obama. But, thanks to a decision earlier this month by the U.S. Parole Commission, he...

Related "Espionage and Intelligence" Articles

What makes a good spy? It's not the flashy qualities you see in the movies, or the "Murder Inc." tactics the CIA has sometimes been ordered to use against terrorists during the past decade. It's something more delicate and human, as explained in...

This is the story of a Boy Scout from Connecticut who grew up to become a Nazi spy during World War II — and another Boy Scout who helped capture the traitor.
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On Friday, after a series of high-level White House meetings last week, President Barack Obama will submit a road map for intelligence reform. It will be a public turning point for the intelligence community and other government entities whose work is...

One interesting conclusion that emerges from The Washington Post's revelation Thursday of the secret "black budget" for intelligence activities is that the United States doesn't have many secrets anymore — not in the age of WikiLeaks and...

Germany demanded the departure from the country of the top spy at the U.S. Embassy in Berlin on Thursday, dramatizing its deepening unhappiness with reports of U.S. intelligence operations targeting its officials.
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His CIA career included assignments in Africa, Afghanistan and Iraq, but the most perilous posting for Jeffrey Scudder turned out to be a two-year stint in a sleepy office that looks after the agency's historical files.
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For more than a decade, the CIA has deployed drones, satellites, spies, informants and tracking devices to thwart al-Qaeda in Pakistan.
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The armed Taliban fighters who captured Bowe Bergdahl in southeastern Afghanistan on June 30, 2009, quickly handed him to a far more dangerous group that shuttled him between hide-outs in Pakistan's rugged tribal belt for the next five years.
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Dismayed by the extent of the government's post-Sept. 11 surveillance activities, which many of them had previously voted to authorize, House lawmakers Thursday approved new restrictions on the National Security Agency that amount to the most sweeping...

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WASHINGTON — An American who vanished nearly seven years ago in Iran was working for the CIA on an unapproved intelligence-gathering mission that, when it came to light in the government, produced one of the most serious scandals in the recent history...

By agreeing to undertake a highly dangerous mission in Iran, disgraced congressman and former Marine Nick Brody (Damian Lewis) gets an opportunity for redemption on “One Last Time,” Episode 309 of Showtime’s “Homeland.”
Wrongly accused of the Langley...

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What with taking off our shoes and belts at airports, discovering the feds are hoovering up all our phone records, and watching drone strikes and SEAL raids around the globe, it's sometimes easy to forget that America has escaped the horror of another...

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